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Each month, Texas State University President Dr. Kelly Damphousse sits down with faculty members, staff, students, alumni, and community members for a conversation about all things TXST — the past, the present, and the bright future of the university.
Part of the TXST Podcast Network: https://www.txst.edu/podcast-network.html
- Most of our sports at the end of their season had, you know, they have conversations with players. The players are saying, you know, I think I want to go or stay, but I feel like our coaches felt this year compared to previous years-
- Absolutely.
- Had a little bit better success in retaining the student-athletes that they wanted to retain. Partly because we had more resources.
- Yep.
- But also because I think the student-athletes are thinking about, I wanna play in the Pac-12 next year.
- You can't say it much better than that. Right?
- Yeah.
- I mean, you're dead on. I mean, we were able to retain more athletes because of where we're going, the resources that we're putting into this and the student-athlete experience, and we got great coaches.
- Yeah.
- Right? I mean, that's a pretty-
- Yeah, that's a huge thing.
- It's a pretty strong combo right there. And you know, support from the administration, support from the community, support from people on campus.
- Hey, Bobcats, Kelly Damphousse here, president of Texas State University. Welcome to "The Current," where we talk with faculty, staff, students, alumni, friends of the university to find out what is happening here at Texas State University. And today, I'm super excited to have the first AD in the new Pac-12, because we became the first school to join the new Pac-12 at 12:01 on July 1, 2026.
- Yeah. I mean, that was-
- Thank you Don Coryell. Yeah, absolutely. So.
- Come on. Here we are. We've been talking about it. We're here.
- We're finally here. So congratulations on that, Don. So happy to have you here. Some background about Don that you may not know about the athletics department. 350 student-athletes or so.
- Yeah, approximately. Yeah.
- 16 sports. Over 100 employees. You've been here for quite a while.
- Yeah.
- More than 21 years, I think.
- Yeah. 22, yeah.
- 22 years now.
- Long time.
- And you got the tiger by the tail right now. A lot of things going on and a lot of excitement around the Pac-12. But let's start by talking a little bit about your story, about how you got here and kinda your background, because, you know, we've been friends for more than four years, 'cause we knew each other before I started working here. And let's talk a little bit about pre-Texas State and then post-Texas State and things are, and right up to today.
- Pre-Texas State, I'll just go back to it. My path started as a student-athlete at Lamar University. And it started a little bit before that.
- There's like, banners every place I go with Donnie Beaumont, right.
- They're everywhere. Right? Can't miss 'em.
- There's a statue up front.
- Yeah. There's none of those.
- Those things.
- There aren't any of those. But got, and a little bit before that I had super supportive parents who, you know, my dad was a little league coach. You know, he's a little dribblers coach. And so I was exposed to sports.
- Were you like a tall, were you like a tall kid?
- Yeah, I was always pretty tall. I was always tall.
- The biggest in your class.
- My dad was about 6'5", and just always like gravitated to like competition, right. I just loved to compete in pretty much any sport you threw me at. I was like, oh, I'm having a great time. It didn't matter if I was good at it, if I was bad at it. I just liked the competitive nature of it, and kind of stuck with a lot of sports and eventually kind of started focusing a little bit more on hoops, and was lucky to be offered a junior college scholarship at Angelina College in Lufkin, Texas. And I played there for two years and then got an offer at Lamar, which was in my hometown. I grew up in Beaumont. And I remember my coach, Greg Giovanni, gave me a great pitch about, "Hey, you know, come and play in front of your family. You've got a lot of friends in Beaumont." And so my path started as a student-athlete. And did an internship. And you know, I talk to our student-athletes about this all the time. It's really hard to have a job, right?
- Yeah.
- As a student-athlete. You have, you know, your time requirements are through the roof, right. And so, I talk a lot about, hey, get an internship when you have time. You know, you never know what kind of doors it's gonna open up for you. Well, I did an internship in Lamar University's Marketing and Development Office my senior year.
- In athletics, or in the university?
- In athletics.
- Okay.
- In athletics. And, you know, being from Beaumont, it was a pretty good fit. And so I remember doing things like, we had a reading program where the student-athletes went into the school district and read with, read with the students. And I would coordinate that because I had connections at different schools. 'Cause heck, I went to, you know, maybe I went there to middle school or it was my elementary school.
- You're former teacher's now the principal there.
- Yeah, sure. Yeah, absolutely. And so I arranged all those, I did a lot of fundraising even as an intern student, because I just happened to know the guy who had season tickets. Hey, go talk to that guy. We're trying to get him to renew. You know, he grew up down the street from here or whatever it happened to be. And so, started there with my connections, met Lamar. I went overseas and played professional basketball for a year in Ireland. And I was back in Beaumont with a thought of, I'm gonna go back another year trying to stay in shape at the Montagne Center there, which is their gym. And I was playing, and the guy who I did my internship with, his name's Tim McMurray, longtime college administrator.
- Yeah. I did not make that connection.
- Yeah. So Tim-
- I know Tim.
- Yeah, so Tim said, "Hey, we're forming this new position. It's an entry-level marketing position." I think it paid like 700 bucks a month or something like that. He said, "Are you interested?" And I said, "Well, I'm a pretty terrible professional basketball player, so yes, let's look at this path instead."
- And what year is that, approximately?
- This would've been 1999.
- Okay.
- And so, so started there with Tim, accepted the job. It actually took, I remember it took several months before it actually came to fruition, but started with Tim and a few months later, Tim left. And I was really young. The AD at the time who I really liked, his name was Dean Billick, he was not interested in promoting me into Tim's role.
- Yeah.
- But it was such a small department. I took over a lot of the responsibilities and I did that for, gosh, I think it was like a year and a half, almost like an interim role.
- That's one of the great things about a small department though, you get to do a lot of things, right?
- You do. You do.
- Early on.
- You do a lot of autonomy and you know, you can test the waters and see what you like.
- I do not like tickets or-
- Yeah, right. Yeah. And so a lot of flexibility, and did that for about a year and a half, and eventually, Dean Billard came around and said, "Hey, you're doing a good job. You know, I'd like to offer you the position." And Tim had taken a job here. And eventually when an associate AD position opened up here a few years later, Tim said, "Hey, you know, I know you, I think you'd do great here. Why don't you apply?" And really kind of how my path got from-
- Wow.
- Beaumont, Texas to Texas State.
- You met someone in Beaumont too, right?
- I did. Yes, sure did. Yeah, my wife Marcy. We have two kids. My son Dylan's 16 years old, my daughter Myra's 13. And so, yeah. Met her and it's just been, you know, it's been a blessing for us to be here for this long, in this community, right. You don't see that a lot in athletics. And this is such a great place to live, such a great place to work. So we've been really fortunate.
- And you don't see someone stay at one place as long as you've stayed.
- Yeah.
- Because it seems to be, to move up you have to move out in your industry. And so, but you stayed, what caused you to stay?
- You know, if it, as you kind of go through that timeline of Texas State at the time, my very first year was 2004, and I remember my very first athletic events, I think was like an 11 a.m. football game against FAU. And David Bailiff was the head coach. In Lamar, we didn't have football. We're basketball only school.
- Oh, is that right?
- We were in the Sun Belt at the time. It was really a basketball only league in the Sun Belt. All the football teams at the time were FCS programs. And so, I came from a place that placed a lot of emphasis on hoops at the time. And when I got here, I went to that first football game and I remember thinking, all right, this is gonna be great. You know, college football game, walked in and nobody was there. And FAU was actually transitioning at the time, which I thought was a big deal. They were moving into FBS football. And so I thought, oh, this is gonna draw a great crowd. It was like my very first deal. I remember 11: a.m., nobody was in the stands, but I remember David Bailiff, he had just passion that I hadn't seen before as a coach. And I thought, man, this guy's gonna win. And I'd heard that, you know, the program hadn't been as successful as it was in the '80s and in maybe early '90s. But the next year he took this program to new heights from a football standpoint, you know, making that deep run in the FCS playoffs where we made a semi-final run, great crowds, selling out, we're on ESPN. And to me, that really like piqued my interest in this place, as to like, what it could be, right. And so, I saw that, and so did a lot of other people on campus and a lot of other people in athletics administration. And that was really when I think kind of planted the seed for an eventual move to FBS. And so those conversations started to happen behind the scenes. And before you know it, that's a multi-year process, right? You know, you play a couple more years at the FCS level, but everybody's talking about FBS, then you have an opportunity to take a program to the FBS level. Well, at that point you're thinking, I don't wanna miss that.
- Yeah, that's right.
- That's a once in a lifetime opportunity, right. And so then you make that move and then you're in the Sun Belt or you're in the WAC and then you're in the Sun Belt and you're like, all right, I wanna see this thing through, I wanna have success. I wanna see where it can go. And that's kind of what kept me here, just chasing, kind of where we're at now, right. Where I think everybody thought this program could get. And so, you know, I always realized the potential in looking at it really early, like a lot of people have, that's really what kept me here. Kind of that carrot to where can we, how big can we make this thing?
- Yeah. And look where you are now.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- And you know, we're not even finished yet. I mean, it's still a long way go.
- Oh yeah, yeah. Just starting.
- Yeah.
- So still just starting 22 years later, still just starting. It's, you know, this. I mean, every day is a new challenge. Every day is a new opportunity. And that's just what it is in athletics.
- Well, your job's not boring, right. There's something going on.
- It's not boring.
- Different all the time. And the thing about your job is kind of interesting is because it seems like not everything is always working at the same level all the time. So like, baseball's off, but softball's down or track is up and like, you're never happy because not everyone's great at the same time. There's always something that needs to be fixed.
- Yeah. You gotta, I try to. If not, I think I probably would've had a heart attack to run myself outta the business.
- I've seen you a couple times, like clutching your chest.
- No, the games get, games get really nerve wracking, but I do try to live a little bit more with a broader scope of what's going on as opposed to getting so caught up in the day to day, and maybe particularly what those results might be, you know, from a particular game that evening, depending on what it is. 'Cause you gotta keep in mind either what the past results were, or what the results could potentially be in the future. And so, I try not to get myself too worked up. That's really hard to do, because I'm a fan like everybody else, right.
- And you know stuff that people know, right?
- But there's a lot of ups and downs, right? There's absolutely a ton of ups and downs. The work is to an extent, like inconsistent, right? You're always doing something different almost every day. And that's a challenge, but it's exciting. But it's a fun profession. It's a rewarding profession, but a ton of ups and downs. Just like, you know, again, just like a fan base, right? At all schools, a lot of ups and downs.
- Well, I think it's an interesting thing about being a fan is you do kinda live in the moment, and even throughout a game, and sometimes I'll be watching on Twitter, even before I got here, when I was at other universities, I'd be following along with a game. And as you know, I never watch games live anymore because-
- Yeah, Yeah. Oh, you're busy, catching 'em later.
- But I'll be watching and people say, if you score three points in a row, people go, "Yeah, we're doing great. We're the best team in the world." And then you, like, three guys strike out and go, "We're the worst batting team ever." Like, the ups and downs of a fan. You could, you can't do that, because it would drive you crazy.
- Yeah.
- Because you're living all these sports. You got softball and baseball playing at the same time. Or you got soccer and volleyball playing at the same time. You can't live in that moment like that.
- It's tough to do. And I'll tell you what, my dad was a little bit like this. I remember, he just was not a person who would get excited at an athletics event. All the other parents are going crazy, and my dad's just watching the game. I remember having conversations with him about it and he's like, "It's just sports."
- Yeah.
- You know, there's no reason for me to get worked up about it. And I try to approach it that same way with our student-athletes and also with my kids. Like, I'm not the dad who's-
- Yelling and screaming.
- Yelling and rah rah. Definitely not screaming, you know what I mean? And it is kind of funny. And I got a couple of friends who are donors who I have some jokes with. You know, they might send me something in the third inning of a baseball game. "Oh my gosh. The team is playing terrible." And sure enough, you know, we score seven in the eighth and win the game.
- We're the best team ever. Yeah.
- So I always laugh. I'm always like, just wait till the end results. You know, that's what you want to do. And that's kind of how I approach those games. I try not to get caught up, you know, in the smaller moments within the game. And it's just more of a big picture thing. But I will tell you, there's some things that I just can't watch. I get too worked up. You know, maybe it's a certain play and I gotta turn around and watch it on the TV instead of watching it live. Don't get me wrong. I mean, I'm into it, but, you know, it's different approach.
- I love college sports and I feel like I know a lot, I know a lot about volleyball 'cause my daughter played volleyball, like yours does. Football and baseball, softball. I get it. Basketball is kind of a mystery to me. I think it is to many people as well. Like, I don't know what a charge and a block is, right? Nobody does. And, but sitting watching a game with you is totally different because you see things as they're happening, and you'll point like, this is about to happen here. And you'll call it, and it does happen. It's gotta be like, that sport in particular has gotta be one that either drives you crazy or makes you so happy because you understand it better probably than anybody in that arena does, it's not.
- Yeah, I think, you know, when you've, we've watched so many games and played so many games, just inherently, you're gonna just kind of know things, right? Like instinctively about what may happen next. You know, you look at whatever it is, your defenses, your offense, your rotations, whatever it looks like. You just kind of know, you know, there's a pattern, right. If you've seen it 100 times, and 90 times this happens, you know, you kinda like, eh, I kind of see where this thing may be heading. But you know, it may be a little bit of an advantage. And I think growing up, you know, I played soccer, baseball, football, tennis, you know, I mean, just a lot of different stuff. You know, anytime I had a chance I would get involved with sports. And just having, I think a little bit of knowledge of those just growing up and playing those has helped. But yeah, basketball in particular is one that I probably get worked up a little bit more, more so than others. You know, just because I probably do have a little bit more experience there.
- You've been here for quite a while and it's exciting to see the change, but, you know, athletics is changing generally. And so, maybe talk a little bit about how that's changed and how it's made your life a little bit more challenging and, you know, challenging for our coaches and for our student-athletes. Sometimes I think people worry about, like, the fans get upset because people are leaving or whatever, but this is a really hard time for a student-athlete to be a student-athlete, 'cause it's complicated and the pressures are unlike anything anyone's ever seen. Way more pressure than you had when you were playing.
- Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, there's no social media, right?
- Yeah.
- I mean, you know-
- Yeah. Thank goodness.
- Just, yeah, right. But just the pressures of our student-athletes are on social media when you're talking about results of games and how they played maybe, and what does that look like. But the college athletic landscape, as you know, you're in it-
- Yeah.
- As deep as I am, right, has changed so much over the past, you know, five, six years. You know, when you're talking about, and we talk about this a lot, the transfer portal, right? I mean, that brings an enormous amount of pressure to, you know, not only your coaches because you're concerned about players leaving, but your players who maybe aren't performing as well, right? And they're thinking, geez, maybe I gotta get in the transfer portal at the end of the season. So, it definitely brings a different dynamic. You know, you're constantly re-recruiting your players to retain them because you want to keep 'em here. And then you've got, you know, your revenue sharing, your NIL opportunities on top of that, which, we have spent just a tremendous amount of time on. And these are things that, several years ago we didn't. Right.
- You couldn't.
- Yeah, and so you're spending, with really, I'll say the same staff, not the same resources. We're resourced really well. But the same staff to an extent managing these new responsibilities. And so it is challenging. And so you gotta look at what are your priorities now, but revenue share and NIL you know, have moved to the top of the list, and so we spent a lot of time on things now that five or six years ago we didn't, you know. When you're talking about, you know, the transfer portal, and you're talking about, you know, revenue share, and then you put in, you know, a conference move into that. You know, that dynamic, that, of all the other things that you're working through, and a lot of new challenges.
- You know, it's interesting. I saw a statistic recently, something like 72% of all conference players in the non-autonomy four conferences got in the portal and left their school. So, then some of them went to other non-autonomy conference schools, but some of them moved up. Some of them, I'm sure they all found someplace to go. Some of them improved their situation, some of them maybe didn't, some of them returned back, they went in the portal and got back. But it's, I mean, that's three out of four of your best players in the conference are getting in the portal and potentially leaving, as opposed to the autonomy four. And I think it was SEC and the Big 10 were like 5% of their all conference players were leaving. So they've got a lot of stability there. You've gotta combat the instability here, try to keep your players, but then you're also, you gotta go in the pool and find someone to replace the people that are leaving. And so it's, the dynamic's unbelievable.
- Yeah, it is. But, and you know, we know this, there's a pecking order-
- Yeah.
- To an extent, right. You know, but what I love about this move to the Pac-12 is I think this changes things for us, I really do. I think the ability to retain our student-athletes at a higher clip is something that we're gonna see. Because again, if you're an athlete, a real athlete who is really into this and is here for all the right reasons to compete at the highest level, man there's not much higher that you can go than the Pac-12. And so, I think, you know, some of those athletes who maybe in the past, you know, thought that, hey, they wanna play in a different conference because they wanted a different experience or higher level experience, it's gonna be hard to come by. And so, I do think that this move is a big benefit for us in terms of retaining our student-athletes.
- And I think we saw that play out. So, most of our sports at the end of their season had, you know, they have conversations with players. The players are saying, "You know, I think I want to go or stay." But I feel like our coaches felt this year, compared to previous years-
- Absolutely.
- Had a little bit better success in retaining the student-athletes that they wanted to retain, partly because we had more resources.
- Yep.
- And thank you for the donors and people were buying more tickets and so on, that were generating more revenue, but also because I think the student-athletes are thinking about, I wanna play in the Pac-12 next year. I wanna play against, you know, name a school that excites them, and that's playing out also for recruits that are coming in. I think that they're thinking about the conference that we're going into, that we're now a part of.
- Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can't say much better than that, right? I mean, you're dead on. I mean, we were able to retain more athletes because of where we're going, the resources that we're putting into this in the student-athlete experience, and we got great coaches.
- Yeah.
- Right. I mean, that's-
- That's a huge thing.
- It's a pretty strong combo right there, and you know, support from the administration, support from the community, support from people on campus. But we've got great bones here.
- Yeah.
- And to add this Pac-12 to the mix and the opportunities to compete in that league. Yeah, we had more success this past off season in all of our sports than we've ever had.
- I don't think it's a secret that people have, their interest in athletics generally has evolved over time. I think there's more and more people nationwide that are interested in college sports. But there was a time when people were kind of checked out here at Texas State. And they've gotten reengaged now, in the past few years. And that's playing out in ticket sales and attendance, but also in just plain old fundraising. And this past spring you had the Bobcat Bonanza and you raised a record, like over $600,000 there. And that place was, you know, stock, and full of people that were there. The energy was high, people were excited. The weather couldn't have been better.
- Yeah. Yeah, sure.
- Everything just hit and it seems like there's not just excitement from the coaches and the players, but our fans are excited about too. Talk about what you think this move means.
- Yeah.
- Few people understand it at the level you do because the time you've spent here and the involvement, the depth of involvement that you've had in athletics here at Texas State.
- Yeah, there's so much momentum right now, Kelly. Not only can you feel it, and I do think you can feel it, right. You see it, you see it everywhere with more Bobcat merchandise, people wearing T-shirts. I was at my daughter's volleyball game a couple weeks ago up in Round Rock, and I had my Texas State hat on, and somebody yelled "Eat 'em up," when you walk by. You know what I mean? There's definitely momentum that you can feel, and then there's momentum that we can see, right. And that's an increase in ticket sales. It's an increase in the Bobcat Club. It's all of our Texas State heroes who have gotten behind our capital campaign projects, all the support that we've gotten from our donors. And, you know, that is one of the favorite parts of this job for me, is seeing the fans, right, and seeing everybody come together for one cause. And, you know, my favorite thing in this job may be to watch our football team run out of that tunnel when we got 30,000 people at UFCU Stadium.
- Student section packed.
- It's crazy.
- Yeah.
- And you just see, and you see how, particularly for me, it's been here for so long, you see how far we've come and, you know, I feel like in my position, I owe that to this fan base because I think this fan base deserves that, right. And that's why, and we work so hard for those things, you know, behind the scenes to make things like that happen and try to run a great department and try to have great coaches and great student-athletes so you can have those kind of results that the fans get behind. And then you have those kind of environments that the fans love to be a part of. But it's such a big deal for me to see all of the Bobcats who've gotten behind our athletics department, and you know, what we're doing as a university that's super important to what we're doing.
- And we've had, or you've had some great success in naming rights. So naming the football stadium, UFCU Stadium, we've had some great donors come forward and we've named the basketball or the baseball field after them. There's some other facilities that could have some naming opportunities and those are kind of big ticket items, right. But I think increasingly, there's an expectation, and I think our fans understand this, but maybe you can talk more about it, about how the regular fan can help with the revenue share and the NIL reality that we face now, where coaches and players are having to talk about the financial aspects of being a student-athlete now. How does a regular fan help us be able to compete in this new league where people now are, have resources that are really hard, a stretch for us to kind of match?
- Yeah, and we still gotta do this, and we talk an awful lot about it. We've gotta continue to build our base.
- Yeah.
- You know, we've taken our season ticket number from something that we weren't proud of, you know, just a few years ago to something that we really are proud of right now on the football field. But we've gotta do that for other sports as well. We have great crowds in some sports, but some sports, we've got a ways to go, right.
- I mean, you look at this spring, we've been watching the new Pac-12 schools, some of them are averaging seven, 8,000 fans at games.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- And we're not close to that.
- Yeah, no, particularly when you're talking about basketball, right?
- Yeah, men's basketball.
- You know, you've got some of these schools, to your point, they're averaging 10,000, 9,000, 8,000, that's an area that we have to have growth, right. And it's really simple. It's get basketball season tickets.
- Yeah.
- That's really easy.
- What is a season ticket?
- Oh gosh.
- Approximately, for a season.
- Well, we're still working on those pricing right now. Approximately a couple hundred bucks a season ticket.
- Yeah.
- Let's put that out there.
- So let's say you buy a couple season tickets, that's 400 bucks.
- Yeah, sure. Yeah.
- And even if you can't go to all the games, that's a way to support. And that's not spending $3 million to name a stadium that's just supporting the team.
- Yeah. No, no, no. We need everybody.
- Yeah.
- You know, we need the highest level of support. But we need, we need, we need bodies. We need people in the stands.
- Students need to come to the games.
- We need students. And so it's really, it's get season tickets to all these sports. It's join the Bobcat Club. And we have a lot of different levels and a lot of different opportunities, right. So you can come in at the level that you're comfortable with. All that money helps us with our revenue share, you know, that we're gonna do with our student-athletes, you know, given to sports specific accounts is an easy way to support the sport that maybe you have more interest in. And we give our coaches a lot of autonomy as to how those spends are, how those funds are spent. And so, there's some really easy ways to get involved. And we try to make it as easy as possible. And again, growing that base of fans. And you know, I talk about this a lot when I get the opportunity to address our fans is, hey, grab a friend, you know, grab a Bobcat that hasn't been back in years. Show 'em what they're missing, right.
- Bring your kids.
- Bring your kids. Yeah.
- There's nothing, there's no, the fan friendliness of our amenities is unbelievable.
- Yeah, sure. Well, we have to, right?
- Yeah.
- I mean, and that's important for us. And again, we want fans to have a great experience. We want to have a lot of families. We wanna get those kids hooked, right? We want 'em come in here and getting merch when they're five, six years old and, you know, by the time they're in high school, they wanna be a Bobcat, right. I mean, that's the idea. That's the brand building that we want to do. And so, yeah, expanding that base is a constant priority for us.
- What's the thing you're looking most forward to in the move to the Pac-12?
- It kind of goes back to just the competition.
- Yeah.
- Right. I mean, that's what it is for me. I can't wait to get a shot at some of these teams, right. And I can't wait to go experience, and our student-athletes can't either, the environments in some of these places and I can't wait for those schools to come here and see what we offer-
- Yeah.
- As Texas State, right. So, I'm just super excited about getting an opportunity to play. You know, it's been over a year now since we've been, since we've been talking about this.
- Can you believe it? The first conversation was like, September of '24, right?
- Oh yeah, well before, yeah. We did it well before our announcement date, obviously, right. And so, it's just been a long time coming and we've worked so hard to get to this point, just getting to where we're actually competing. And, you know, you live day to day sometimes, right, and you don't have a chance to maybe kind of celebrate what you've done, or even reflect on what you've done. And I remember, you know, the first time it actually kind of hit me, you know, this Pac-12 move to an extent where I had a chance to reflect on this. It was only, gosh, it would've been like this past spring, we had a meeting in San Ramon, which is where the Pac-12 headquarters are, and I had a layover in Los Angeles. And had just a little bit of time in an airport kind of by myself, and I found like, a little coffee shop and I turned my computer on and had a cup of coffee and there wasn't really anybody around. It was a late flight out. And my email popped up and it was a proposed football schedule.
- Yeah.
- And so it was the first time I'd seen, you know, Texas State versus Boise State, Texas State versus Oregon State, Texas State, you know, versus Washington State. And that was the first time kind of by myself in Los Angeles in the airport where I'm like, all right, this is the real deal. And it was just kind of euphoric to an extent that I had an opportunity to do that. And it was fun to reflect at the time on that.
- The amazing thing that I'm hearing now is people saying, "I've already planned out the trips I'm gonna make, and I can't wait to go to Boise."
- Everywhere.
- Yeah. And they're gonna go, San Diego and, you know, the Pacific Northwest. And you know, it's funny, when the schedule came out, 'cause remember there was like two different versions of the schedule. They kinda switched around a little bit. And I said, the first time you showed me the schedule, I said, "Man, those are great destinations and we're gonna have some great teams coming here." And they almost flipped the whole thing. And I said, "Those are great destinations. We've got some great teams coming here." They're almost, you couldn't do it wrong.
- No, you can't, and we've got such a great, and not to just talk about football, but we've got such a great football schedule this next year, obviously open at UT and then we've got UTSA at home and North Texas at home and UIW at home.
- Our first four games are within either on campus or 25 miles away.
- Yeah, it's a perfect schedule for us. And then you put in those Pac-12 schools with those brands, right, and the excitement that our fans have to see those teams, just couldn't be any better.
- Yeah.
- I mean, it's a great situation for us.
- Well, I'm proud of you. I know you poured a lot into that move, and then now that we made the move, it's like we've been building a plane where we're flying it. And now it's all here. We're in the Pac-12 and there's no more future state, it's here and now.
- Yeah.
- So congratulations to that.
- Let's get in there and win a lot of games, right.
- Yeah, we're not just going there to be a number, we're going there to win.
- Yes.
- And compete for championships.
- We're not happy with just, oh, we're here, we're ready to win.
- I love the fact when we were recruiting a women's basketball coach, first off, we had a lot of sitting basketball coaches apply for the, or getting interested in the opportunity. But everyone was talking about, I want to be part of this opportunity here.
- Yeah.
- Going in the Pac- 12 was really exciting for them. And they all thought, you know, we can win there.
- Yeah.
- And I believe it's true.
- Yeah, they'll see what we have.
- Yeah.
- We've got the bones.
- Yeah.
- We can do really well.
- All right, Don, this is something we started, when we started doing the podcast. We actually asked listeners to submit questions for me. And you get to be the podcast host.
- Oh, man, this is good stuff.
- And I never see 'em, so I don't know what's gonna happen, but fire away.
- What Pac-12 matchup are you personally most excited to see Texas State play for the first time and why that one?
- What do you think it is?
- It's a good one. Oh yeah. I think I know what it's.
- What is it?
- You know, I think, I think when you talk about Pac-12 football, you know what immediately pops into your mind is probably playing on that blue turf in Boise State.
- So it's Boise State, because I hate Boise State.
- Yeah.
- And you know why I hate Boise State.
- I do.
- Because-
- I don't know why.
- Yeah, so, Fiesta Bowl-
- Oh, I do.
- Several years ago-
- I do know why.
- They're playing OU, and they, it's a tyrant game there, 'cause they were huge underdogs. And it's a tight, tight game. And then OU goes up real late and they're up by like seven points, and Boise State gets the ball, they throw a hook in lateral and they score this crazy touchdown, and we all think they're gonna tie the game, it's gonna go into overtime. And then they go for two and they do a Statue of Liberty play behind the back.
- Do the a Statue of Liberty.
- And I was watching it and I saw the whole defense sway this way, and I saw the offensive player go behind the quarterback's back and I saw the ball get handed off and I turned the TV off. I didn't watch ESPN for like a month, 'cause I knew what happened.
- You missed the proposal.
- I missed the proposal, I missed everything. But I have hated Boise State since then, with a, you know, I'm actually pretty good friends with the Boise State president, and the athletic director's a great guy as well. So I jokingly hate them.
- Oh yeah, sure.
- But I want to beat them so badly.
- It's a great college. It's a great college football game.
- It's a great story. And it's a great field. I think a lot of our fans excited about that too.
- Yeah, I think so as well. Yeah, you know, they've set a really high precedent, you know, in regards to how to run a football program and athletics department. So it's fun to be able to compete with 'em. And I think, what you talked about, you know, seeing them in that game, I think that's the vision for the Pac-12, right. Whoever's gonna be that conference champion is gonna be in the CFP, and somebody's getting in an opportunity to shock the world like they did that year.
- And with all due respect, nobody knew who Boise State was.
- Right.
- I didn't know who they were.
- Yeah.
- And them winning that game meant everything. And then they got the blue turf which is also a thing. But their reputation is dependent upon the success of the football-
- Absolutely.
- And their athletics program, generally.
- Yeah. Absolutely.
- So what about you? Not Boise State, where?
- You know, I'll probably say, you know, our Pac-12 home opener.
- Yeah.
- Against Colorado State.
- Yeah, pretty exciting.
- That's probably the one that I'm most excited about.
- Gonzaga home game.
- Ah, yeah.
- Yeah.
- Gonzagan hoops is gonna be-
- Can you imagine what the stadium's gonna look like, our arena's gonna look like when Gonzaga comes in.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- And when we beat them, how sad they'll be when they lose.
- We're fully expecting to sell out for that game.
- Absolutely. Thanks for joining us so much.
- Yep, thanks. Thanks for your time.
- Thank you for joining us as well. It's always great to find out what's going on here at Texas State University. Thanks for joining us at "The Current." Until next time, States up, everyone.